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‘Supergirl’ Season 1 Episode 4 Recap: “Livewire”

After Supergirl shuffled episodes (due to the storyline and reverence to the Paris attacks), it was Thanksgiving in National City. And like any good Thanksgiving storyline, family came to visit. For Kara (Melissa Benoist) and Alex (Chyler Leigh), it meant a visit from their foster mother, Eliza (Helen Slater).

It was with the visit of Eliza that the audience got to see the dynamic between the three women, which included a semblance of Kara always getting a free pass and Alex getting the brunt of her mother’s criticism.

If a visit from your mother wasn’t stressful enough, Kara had to deal with a new villain in town. It all started with Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart) chastising her shock jock radio personality Leslie Willis (Brit Morgan) for berating Supergirl. When Cat demotes the radio host to traffic reports, she has a run-in with some live wires, a crashing helicopter and Supergirl.

In an attempt to save her, Supergirl inadvertently creates the villain Livewire as some of her powers, with the help of electricity, turnsed the woman into Livewire – a superpowered villain with the ability to manipulate electric currents.

So, balancing her foster mother, the tension between Alex and Eliza, and answering questions from her foster mother about revealing herself is balanced with Livewire and her revenge against Cat Grant. Of course, in the end, Supergirl bests Livewire – and Hank Henshaw (David Harewood) remarks Livewire will be the D.E.O’s first non-alien resident.

The villain of the week truly took a backseat to the family drama as Alex admitted to her mother that she works for the D.E.O.; the viewers got to see Kara and Alex as young girls testing the abilities of Kara’s flying and more from parents Eliza and Jeremiah Danvers (Dean Cain).

The biggest reveal came from Eliza Danvers when she told her daughters about how a man named Hank Henshaw (yes the same man the girls are working for now) came to their house and wanted to take Kara away. The only thing that staved him off was Jeremiah agreeing to work for the D.E.O and Eliza also believes the D.E.O had something to do with her husband’s death.

In the end, Alex and Kara decided not to confront Henshaw about their father – but instead will investigate it on their own.